Six Underground
by Summoner Luna
Summary: What are you afraid of? -Heroes, stress reaction, and the price of saving the world.-


_Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that's triggered by a terrifying event. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event. -  
_

* * *

Quistis is afraid of sleeping alone.

The first night, she lays awake and jumps at every sound, until she finally turns on every light in her dorm, and sits and stares at the glow of the television until dawn. She repeats this for close to a week, until Xu pulls a chair beside her in the cafeteria that makes such a noise that Quistis has cast the spell before she sees who it is.

The cafeteria goes silent, and Xu, ice clinging to her hair, grabs Quistis by the wrist and drags her, not to the infirmary, but to her own quarters.

"When's the last time you slept," she demands. Quistis flexes her fingers and they still have the feeling of frozen heat that comes with ice magic. She doesn't answer.

"I'm not asking for my health." Xu's words are sharp and leave no room for argument. "Answer my question or I'll have you admitted and isolated."

Quistis shrugs, and when Xu looks like she's going to speak, Quistis interrupts her. "I don't know."

"Since you got back?"

She shakes her head.

"You're officially on medical leave of absence."

"Xu-"

"Save it."

Quistis' shoulders deflate by an inch, and the hard couch in Xu's room is starting to feel inviting. She starts to close her eyes, and there is a soft _bang,_ and she is on her feet, another spell waiting.

"And as part of your leave, you're forbidden from junctioning. Effective immediately." Xu is standing at the kitchenette, and has closed a cabinet. She is now staring at Quistis over a glass of water and a packet of something that could be sugar but Quistis knows is not, and her face is as serious as Quistis has ever seen. She hardly has the strength to remove her junctions. Her eyes feel like someone boiled them before putting them back in her head, and when she reaches up to unplug the feed her movements are delayed, like she's watching them happen after the fact.

"Okay. Drink this."

Quistis stares at the glass. "No."

"You can drink this, or I can take you downstairs and feed it to you through an IV."

For a second Quistis thinks of fighting her, of trying to leave, but she knows she won't get far, and because it's Xu, she merely glares at her and complies. Xu marches her to the bed, helps her pull off her shoes, and sits beside her stroking her hair. The terror that normally rises up as soon as she closes her eyes is muted, and eventually she succumbs to the draught.

Quistis wakes to shouting and a crowded room. She is holding the cord of Xu's bedside lamp, and Xu is sitting on the floor with tears on her cheeks, her room in complete disarray, and her neck is bright red. Someone is trying to pry the cord from her fingers while another set of hands holds her arms at her side, and Quistis fights them and starts to yell.

"What the hell happened to her?" She is resisting restraint, determined to get to Xu, to make sure she's alright. Xu looks up and Quistis sees now her neck is red with two solid lines, and she stares at the cord in her hands and drops it and screams, "No. No!"

"Calm down," the person vying for the cord tells her, and it's Kadowaki. "Quistis, I don't want to drug you but I will if you don't _calm down._"

She looks at Kadowaki, and then at her own hands. "I did that."

Kadowaki's eyes are soft, but not without caution.

_"I did that,"_ she repeats, and the second set of hands holding her arms tighten, and Quistis recognizes at once the smell of leather, cedar wood, and the hint of something feminine. "What are you doing here?" She jerks against his grip, but Squall moves his arms around her and presses them into her chest. Quistis kicks a leg back which Squall is expecting, and his stance is steady. "Xu!"

Xu meets her eyes, and she is not angry, but she might be scared. Xu is scared. Xu who isn't scared of anything, is scared. Of her.

Quistis starts to cry, and she hates Squall enough for being there to see it that she throws her head backwards into his nose. His arms loosen with a soft, _"Fuck!"_ but she does not run, she only collapses at his feet and leans her head against his legs weeping. Kadowaki kneels beside her.

"We have to take you downstairs," she says. "...Both of you. And we want to do it as quietly as possible."

Quistis continues to sob against Squall's legs, and she hears him talking to Kadowaki, but he doesn't move, he just stands there as a pillar, as a constant, until he finally reaches down and helps her to her feet.

"You asshole," Quistis says.

"I know," he replies. "That's why I'm the one they called."

.

Quistis is discharged after heavy sedation and sleeping for three days straight. Kadowaki has removed all of her magic in addition to her GF, and the world looks washed out and old. Squall is waiting to walk her upstairs, and he doesn't smile when she makes eye contact.

"Thank you," she says, and he nods. "But you're still an asshole."

"I know."

"Xu?"

"I'm here."

Xu is wearing a turtleneck, but looks happy to see her when their eyes meet. Squall hovers behind them on the way upstairs, and pulls Quistis aside when they get to Xu's room.

"You..." he starts, and his eyes lose some of their edge.

"Don't start," she tells him.

"I almost gave Rinoa a black eye," he finally says. Quistis raises an eyebrow, and he continues. "All I'm saying, is... Fuck it, we both know I'm not good at this."

Quistis laughs in spite of herself and leans forward to give him a hug. She sees Squall flinch just so when she moves towards him, and that alone is worth more than anything he could ever say. "Thank you."

"Try not to get me pulled out of bed tonight, okay?"

Quistis walks into the room and shuts the door and she and Xu just stare at each other.

"I'm-"

"Don't," Xu snaps. "I get it. It was stupid of me to take the risk."

"You're okay?"

"There's a reason I made you unjunction. Anyway, that long in the field? You're skin and bones, I threw you off pretty quickly."

"You're still wearing a turtleneck. That means you've still got-"

"Bruises, sure. I've got a lot of those. Want to watch a movie?" Xu's voice is clipped, but she brushes her hand over Quistis' arm as she passes.

The first night, they do not sleep, and they don't talk about it. The second night, Quistis goes back to her own room, where again, she doesn't sleep. The third night, Xu knocks on her door at two in the morning with a bottle of rum and low budget porn. They drink themselves into a stupor and wake up late the next morning and agree it's the most comfortable hangover either of them have ever had. The fourth night, they go back to Xu's, and Quistis falls asleep with Xu's hand tracing circles on her bare back and for the first time since the war, she wakes up rested.

After two months, Xu leaves on a field mission, and Quistis lays awake in Xu's bed and hugs a bottle of rum without drinking it, and listens to the _tick, tick_ of her clock until dawn. After that, she spends her nights in the training center, and manages a few fitful naps during the day. Xu is gone for a week, and when she gets home Quistis starts to cry again and moves most of her belongings upstairs.

Xu falls asleep quickly that night, and Quistis listens to the clock and wonders when it will ever end.

* * *

Rinoa is afraid of stillness.

It is nothing new, she thinks, but then the _fear_ of it is new.

She cannot be in Garden. At best, she sees the Quad from a window, caution tape blocking the back corner, and her balance drops and she has to grab a wall, a table, the nearest person, to keep from hitting the ground. She learns within a day which windows to avoid, and never goes above the first floor. At worst, she sees the SeeDs walking around in uniform (which is unavoidable, and constant) and she sees them not as allies but as a faceless army marching for her across time.

This vision is not her own.

"I could go back to Timber," she tells Squall, even though he doesn't want to talk about it.

"You could."

"They're still not... I promised Zone and Watts we would free Timber together. I'm never going to do that sitting here."

"Mmm."

She sighs in frustration. They are on her bed leaning against the wall, a movie playing in the background they aren't really watching. "I want to know what you think."

He shifts one of the pillows behind him, and runs a hand over her arm. "I don't know what I think, Rinoa."

"You don't want me to go."

"..."

"But Squall, you know I can't..."

"I know."

"I don't know what I would do in Timber. They would expect me to know what to do. They would expect me to talk about the war."

"Probably."

"You're not very helpful."

She feels Squall smile against her head, and he moves his hand over her shoulder and into her hair.

"See! Not helpful! I'm talking about something serious here!" But she smiles anyway, because she knows this is hard for him.

"If you go to Timber, they will ask questions. And they'll think after saving the world, Timber will be no trouble."

At large, there are no public reports on what they did. Something involving Esthar, and Adel, and Rinoa is fine if it stays that way.

"I guess... I..."

"What?"

"I guess I could always go back to that... To my father's house. He'd take me. And it would..." She has trouble finishing the sentence. Garden feels like a prison, but at least she can walk the grounds. At least she has the library. At least she has Squall. "You don't have anything clever to say about that?"

She hears a dull thud as Squall leans his head back into the wall, and he wraps his other arm around her. "I think it's a bad idea. What would you do, there?"

"...Nothing." The word takes her breath away and Squall shifts them off the wall so they are laying beside each other on her bed and his eyes are piercing. But he kisses her instead of saying anything, and they drop it, at least for the rest of the afternoon.

Squall signs a lease on an apartment in Balamb because, he says, he'd rather not be at Garden all the time anyway. She ignores calls from her father, from Zone and Watts. She will see them eventually. Later, maybe. When she can answer their questions, when she's ready to be still. And now she can finally get away from Garden.

.

She paints every room in the Balamb apartment, taking as much time as possible. She declines help, and when asked, says it's because of the paint job on the train, and she wants to prove she can do better. But sanding and priming and pausing to reference tutorials and guidebooks make the project last longer. While she lets one room dry, she buys decorations for another, and studies placement and eventually she is finished, their home perfectly furnished for people that might not be them. She cooks every night until she feels confident in having people over for dinner, and insists on cooking for the others to get them out of the caf. She goes out sometimes to humor Selphie, reads her way through B-Garden's library, and volunteers at an animal shelter, where she spends the time Squall is at work taking care of the pets of students who died in the war.

At night, she and Squall take turns keeping each other awake. Long hours of distraction (and they have become so good at distraction), and sleep interrupted by dreams. She wakes him screaming and he wakes her jerking and fighting. Sometimes they soothe each other back to sleep, sometimes they leave the house and walk, and sometimes they fight, just for something to do.

When Zone and Watts finally visit, they ask her if she is happy, and she lies and tells them yes. They tell her about Timber, that DC is doing nothing, too busy trying to repair the damage to their own country, and Timber is suffering ever more.

Later, she sits on their apartment patio and stares at the stars. Squall joins her, his eyes trained firmly on the grass, the trees, on her, on anything but space, and she tells him she needs to move. She would like to say it's because of Timber (and it is, of course it is), but she is suffering from routine, and there is work there that will keep her busier than anything Balamb can offer, and she thinks she might be ready. He agrees surprisingly fast.

In Timber there is no chance for stillness. She reads when there is time and cooks dinner most nights, but she is no longer Squall's arm candy, and their house, largely unpainted and eclectic, is theirs.

But she stays busy. Because when she stops, the nightmares come. And then the real fear begins.

* * *

Selphie is afraid of silence.

Before, in Trabia, she could sit for hours and watch the snow, and sometimes it was nice to get away from the chatter in the halls, and the music someone always had playing that was way too loud for school but never quite loud enough for her.

Silence then was peace, was thought; it was art. Silence was looking at the stars on the longest night, and it was falling asleep with her guitar across her lap and the warmth from her best friend's head resting on her shoulder. It was even the low hum of the carrier that took her to Dollet, anxious and excited and ready to conquer the world.

Now, silence is standing at the gates of Trabia and looking at the blackened walls; it is walking past the wreckage and seeing hallways crowded with ghosts. Silence is the moment Rinoa collapsed in front of them and when she turned to Squall he looked, for the first time, completely at a loss.

They are all given leave, willingly or not. Selphie calls her friends from Trabia, from _home,_ and meets them in Deling City, where there are concerts, where there are dance halls, and they party.

And they _party._

They dance until the clubs are closed and take the party back to their hotel, and fall into a hard sleep sometime near sunrise. After they wake, Selphie looks for things to do in town, for sports parks, for street musicians, for anything busy and loud enough to keep her going until the clubs open again. When her friends have to leave, she makes new ones, people whose names she will forget who don't ask questions about the tiny girl with the battle scars who has turned her hotel room into a bar. She thinks, _I am being responsible, _because she always keeps her head and never lets the strangers spend the night, but when dawn breaks, the silence is overwhelming and she leaves again for new friends, and a new night. She could stay in the city forever, she thinks, and still not find anything loud enough to drown out the silence.

Balamb has no nightclubs, and she tries to drag Rinoa down to the docks at night to watch the bands play, or sits in her apartment with Squall and blasts rock music far longer than Rinoa has the patience to keep her expression polite. She plans a Fall Garden Festival, plays her guitar on the Quad during the day, and the radio in her room is always on. At night, Selphie thinks of Deling City, and wonders if she shouldn't have brought a little bit of that home.

.

Irvine wants to take her to dinner, and she picks Balamb's only bar, the one with the jukebox. She tries to talk him into going with her to DC, and lets him follow her back to her room.

"'Got some static in it. You could probably get that fixed." Irvine points at the radio while they sit together on the bed, passing a flask back and forth and giggling. She turns it up, some heavy rock song that bounces around the tiny room.

"I like it," she says, and hiccups. He grins and places his hat on the small box, and leans in to kiss her.

After, they lay sweating on top of the sheets, and he reaches over to turn it off.

"Don't-" she starts, but not in time, and the room is stifling.

"You sleep with that thing runnin'?" he speaks into her hair and it tickles, and she tries not to panic.

"Is that going to bother you?"

Irvine doesn't answer, and Selphie lays awake, eyes wide, and in time he has fallen asleep.

The next time she insists on keeping it on, and after that he does not spend the night. But his steady breathing is not enough, and if that's the price to pay, she'd rather sleep alone.

Silence is the Great Salt Lake, and not knowing if Squall was going to hold it together long enough to lead them, and it is standing at the gates of B-Garden and waiting for the Galbadian attack.

Selphie parties harder than she should and never lets the music die, because silence is the moment, no matter how short, when time slipped away from her and the only sound she could hear was eternity. Silence is the void she knows will always be out there, and from which she will always hide.

* * *

Squall is afraid of loss.

He fills out a leave request their first night back, and gives Cid a hard stare when he turns it in, daring him to make a joke, and is almost disappointed that he doesn't. The closest he gets is the slightest smile in the corner of Cid's eyes, and a "just let us know if you decide you want more time."

He spends his leave with Rinoa in a hotel room in Winhill where they can pretend to hide from the rest of the world. Where there are no memories of war, where they have only been in passing and where, though he'd never admit it (but thinks Rinoa suspects it), he can almost feel close to a different life.

In the quiet of the mountains he pretends he is unwinding, and loses himself in her, in the person he feels holds the last threads of his humanity. For days, they live in a bubble of exploring each other in ways they are probably too young to understand, and definitely too young to care.

This is how they spend their time: wake up, sex, stay in bed, eventually make their way to a place for what this late can now only be considered brunch, return, sex, nap, dinner, more sex, and then sleep, often interrupted by nightmares which they assuage with, of course, sex. After a couple of days Rinoa quietly asks him, shier than he thought possible on her, if she is supposed to feel this sore. He has no idea and it worries him, worried he's hurting her, that he's done something wrong. He says he's sorry, and is afraid to touch her, afraid of doing anything that might scare her away. They attempt awkward conversation and the silence is increasingly uncomfortable, but none of this is why he wanted to come here, not at all.

Late that night he wakes to her warm breath in his ear and her fingers whispering across his chest. He turns and she kisses him, hard, and moves her hand further under the sheets.

"I thought-" he says, and gasps at her touch.

"I'll be fine," she answers and moves her lips across his face. "I..."

But she winces anyway. He stops, and touches her face and she shakes her head and he thinks she might be crying.

"Please," she says.

"You're-"

"I'm just glad you're here," she says, and pulls him closer, and he pretends like he believes her. In the morning she tells him she is sorry, and that she's afraid of the time that they have nothing to do. Squall understands that all too well. They practice things that both fill the time and give her a break, and he is excruciatingly aware of how much he already depends on her very presence just to make it through the day.

The next night he doesn't realize he's awake until he hears Rinoa cry out and he turns and sees her holding her face, jerking in twilight stages of sleep. He moves to wake her, and a dim pain registers in his left hand and he knows _exactly_ why she is holding her face, and feels his stomach drop. He pulls her close and holds her and tells her over and over again that he is sorry, sorry. She fights out of her dream and doesn't know what has happened and, confused, promises she is okay, and talks him back to sleep. The next morning her face is swollen and she flinches when he touches her cheek.

"It was a dream," she says. "I'm fine."

But he is afraid to touch her for the second time this trip, and they agree to go home early.

That night they sleep in the guest room Garden has given her to avoid the stares from the other SeeDs on his hall. Sometime before dawn he gets a phone call, and almost runs to the SeeD wing, pausing just enough at the door to watch her hair fall across the rough white pillowcase, and wonders if she isn't safer without him.

.

Kadowaki meets him at the door to the infirmary and is probably the only person in Garden he would stop for, until he sees over her shoulder a familiar set of boots on one of the patient beds, and charges past anyway.

"She's just sleeping," Kadowaki's voice carries with it a warning, and Squall stands at the foot of the bed and holds the wall for support.

"What happened?" he finally asks.

"Anxiety attack. Selphie brought her in, said she lost her balance outside the Quad and started to panic. You don't know why, do you?"

Squall glares at her, and moves closer to the head of the bed. "Why is she asleep?"

"I needed her to calm down. She'll be fine when she wakes up, but I didn't want you hearing about it from someone else."

He mumbles something like a thank you, and Kadowaki nods, and closes the privacy curtain. Watching her in the bed, Squall considers asking for something to knock _him_ out, at least until she's awake, when he knows she's okay.

Hours later, they sit in her guest room with an open box of pizza and a boring movie on in the background, and Rinoa tells him she wants to leave Garden.

He nods, and pretends to focus on the television.

After a long pause, she adds, "Not _you,_ silly."

"Where do you want to go?" He thinks of the phone call he got earlier, and realizes he knew then this conversation was coming. Has always known.

"I don't know."

For a couple of days she talks through her ideas, but Squall has a plan of his own, one that keeps her close, that keeps her with him, and far quicker than he'd thought possible, he comes to her room and hands her an envelope containing two keys.

"One of them is mine," he says. "If it's okay."

.

His days are divided in two: the time he is with Rinoa, and the time he is not. He laughs at her as she turns their apartment into a showroom, but doesn't really know what he would do with his time if he didn't have Garden to keep him busy during the day, and mostly lets her do whatever she needs to feel at home. Whatever he thinks will make it easier for her to stay.

"It's the war, you know." Irvine has taken him to Balamb's only bar, where he picks a table as far away from the jukebox as possible.

Squall raises an eyebrow, and examines the drink Irvine has ordered for him. Rinoa is somewhere with Selphie, and he misses her.

"You keep checking your watch. They're just at some concert by the docks, she'll be fine. But that's why you're so afraid of losin' her."

"Very insightful," Squall grunts, and takes a drink. It's a dark beer, and he can taste the coffee in it like Irvine promised he would.

"She ain't goin' anywhere. But you're afraid of losin' all of us, aren't you? Price o' havin' friends, pretty boy."

"I thought you wanted a drink."

"I figur'd conversation was implied." Irvine grins, and pulls a leg into the seat of the booth and leans against the wall.

"Not conversation about me," Squall says, and Irvine tips his hat and changes the subject.

Because Irvine is right. Because he is afraid. And this is why he fought it, why he avoided it, but when he lost that battle he actually won, and it feels so fragile.

"How was your night?" Rinoa curls against him in bed, and she smells like music and the open sea.

"I missed you," he says. She laughs, but pulls his arms tighter around her, and later he hears her whisper that she missed him too.

.

Rinoa is outside when he gets home, and it is dark in the apartment, and Squall guesses she has been out there for awhile. He opens the patio door and sits beside her, and watches her watch the stars.

"I need to leave," she says finally, suddenly, and his skin goes cold and he says nothing. Her words hang on the air until she turns and meets his eyes and her face looks, for a moment, horrified, and she cries, "Not you!"

He looks away, and leans back in his chair. "Then what?"

"I need...to go to Timber." She talks about Zone and Watts, and what is happening with them, with her town, and Squall barely hears any of it. _I need to leave. _Her words play again and again in his mind, and he tries to remember how to breathe. At some point she has stopped talking, and is back to staring at the stars.

"Okay," he says.

"Okay?"

"We'll go to Timber."

She opens her mouth and closes it again quickly, and Squall wonders how she can still not know. How he can follow her into space, but she's surprised he would follow her to Timber. There is nowhere she can go where he would not join her as long as she will have him.

While they are packing, Irvine catches his eye and Squall doesn't turn away. _I need her,_ he thinks. _More than I need to breathe. _Irvine gives him a wink.

In Timber, he looks at her and says it to her out loud. Rinoa smiles, and he wonders if she knows how much he means it.

* * *

Zell is afraid of nothing.

In Balamb, they always thought he was a superhero. The homegrown boy who went to Garden to learn how to save the world.

_You were right, Balamb!_ he thinks, and now he really is a superhero. Strong and invincible, and there is nothing he cannot do.

Zell always wondered at Squall and Seifer's popularity, always in their shadow. Squall, alluring and oblivious, and Seifer, who stood up and bragged and basked under both the admirers and the unimpressed. And Zell, who, no matter what he did, was always just the other guy.

He is no longer just the other guy.

He tells their story to anyone who will listen, and it is ever more exciting, and his role is always larger, always greater, and without the others around, there is nobody to call him out and set the record straight. At Garden, Zell is the reason they can sleep safely at night. He has a following of junior classmen who bring him hot dogs and soda in exchange for fighting lessons, and the girls from the library are always whispering about something, and fall instantly silent whenever he walks into a room. He even dates one for awhile, but he needs _more._

The Training Center is useless-it is for training, after all. Zell is an A-Rank SeeD who defeated the time witch from the future; he does not need _training._ He walks the Balamb plains and goes into the forest alone, and still, it is not enough. He learns that Squall is using fewer junctions and tries it, just for the challenge, but he can't stand the weak, sluggish feeling in his limbs, and he misses the constant buzz of a handful of GFs fighting for a place in his brain.

After Quistis' breakdown, Cid mandates leave for all of them, and Zell is the only one to protest as far as he knows. Or at least, half their group is on the Galbadian continent before Zell has stopped yelling about wanting to be back in the field long enough to miss them, and he assumes it was their choice.

"Yo," Zell drops down at a table in the cafeteria where Squall and Rinoa are making a rare appearance in public, and he acts like he doesn't notice he's interrupting what looked like a deep conversation. There's no time he wouldn't be interrupting them anyway, unless he can catch Squall working.

"Hi," Rinoa says softly. Zell can't figure out when she got so quiet, and blames Squall, because it's easier than acknowledging the truth. Squall says nothing, and just glares.

"I want to take a trip, bro. You in?"

"A trip?" Squall asks, and looks to Rinoa.

"Until an assignment comes up. Train in Esthar or somethin-"

"I'm not going to Esthar."

"_Or something,_ dude. Come on. Trabia? She can come-"

"No." Squall's tone is final and he stands up, and Rinoa quickly follows.

"What happened to you, man?" he says, louder than necessary. The noise in the cafeteria dies.

Squall stops. "What?"

"What are you doing, that's so important you can't come kick some monster ass? Don't you want to get out of here for awhile?"

"I said no." Squall starts to move around the table and Zell blocks him, close enough to feel Squall's breath on his forehead.

"You're pathetic."

"Zell-" Rinoa steps beside Squall, her dark eyes flashing something like a warning.

"I miss the Squall that was more interested in killin' things than getting laid," he spits out, and is too angry to be impressed that Rinoa doesn't back away.

He sees Squall's hand ball into a fist, and feels his skin tingle in anticipation.

"Come on," he goads. "I'm asking for time away from other people. Just you and the smell of blood and not giving a fuck. When's the last time you had that? Or do you even remember what that's like?"

The muscles in Squall's arm tighten even more, and Zell almost whoops in joy when he sees Rinoa finally step back. But Squall just narrows his eyes and hisses, "I said, _no._" He releases his fist and takes Rinoa's hand and leads her away.

"Yeah well, fuck you too!" Zell shouts after him. He watches them exit the caf and can't tell if what he feels is disappointment or disgust.

.

He goes with Selphie to DC a few times and leaves her in the city while he heads into the wild for the weekend. Sometimes he joins her at the clubs, just to pick fights with guys twice his size. He is disappointed when they return to Balamb if he has less than a broken nose, or second degree burns from the black dragons that protect the mountains. Ma says very little, and Zell doesn't question why, and ignores her worried glances.

His first assignment should be an easy one, until he back talks the wrong person and ends up in a brawl. Xu tells him, in no uncertain terms, that he'll be working security for the rest of his career if he pulls anything like that again. He makes it through two routine assignments without incident, and lucks out when Garden sends a team to Centra where the Esthar refugees have broken into a civil war.

The fighting down there is dirty, and it lights a fire in his veins like Zell has not felt since the war. There are no front lines; there is only guerilla fighting, and there is no part of enemy territory that Zell does not approach without morbid delight. He plants traps and takes out scouts because he fucking _owns_ this place. His own teammates start to fear him (he thinks they are weak), and he learns he has a nickname with allies and enemies alike. Zell thinks he is like a God.

A month into the fighting, against orders, Zell sneaks into an enemy camp and into an ambush. He hears the troops before he sees them, and Ifrit is standing beside him and clears the front line. When the second wave moves in, Zell is speed, and motion, and fire, and does not feel himself growing tired as he watches the bodies fall. He doesn't feel the barbs that lodge between his shoulder blades until the shock blows him across the clearing and he stares at the sky, winded, but not without fight. Heat forms in his fingers, but, always a poor caster, Zell knows in the moment he has made his fatal mistake. The flames he sends forward are weak, and buy him enough time to stand but not enough to brace himself, and he is overwhelmed.

Later, in Garden's infirmary, he can recall a storm of lightning, and sees Squall and Xu illuminated against the Centran sky. The image freezes in his mind; _they_ are like Gods. They _are_ Gods.

Squall is his first and only visitor, and it's the first time they have spoken since their argument in the cafeteria. He sits beside the bed and says nothing, and Zell hates him for making him be the first to speak.

He falls asleep, and Squall is still there when he wakes up.

"Fuck you," he croaks. Squall responds by handing him a cup of water and a straw. "What are you doing here?"

"Making sure you didn't finally succeed in killing yourself."

Zell grunts, and the water is cold. He can't shake the image of Squall and Xu duel-casting, commanding more power in a few minutes than he had in months. He is still just someone else's shadow. "I guess it's funny," he says after a long period of silence. "As much as I hated Seifer, who'd have guessed I'd turn into him?"

"There's worse people to be," Squall shrugs. Zell thinks he will never understand the twisted friendship between those two.

"So I'm gonna live?"

"For now. You're suspended from active duty, so I don't think you can do much more damage than you've already done."

"Suspended?" He supposes he shouldn't be surprised.

"For now."

Squall leaves, and Zell lays awake, the pain keeping him from sleep. He was a hero when they got home, and now he's a show-off in a hospital bed, and his truest friend is a man whose weaknesses he tried to use against him. He thinks that maybe he has a fear after all, and maybe he's afraid of insignificance, and he does not laugh at the irony.

* * *

Irvine is afraid of _nothing._

He's not without fear of course; all the normal ones are still there. Watching the people he loves die. His hockey team losing the championships. Fish. (Yes, fish. They're fine for a meal, but he can't figure out why people want to touch 'em.) These things haven't changed, because nothing has changed.

He's still the observer, as he has always been. He takes his leave with grace, and uses it to think about his next moves. Stay in Balamb? He's never cared to be a SeeD, though. Go home? But G-Garden is all construction and recovery right now, and honestly that's too much like work. He buys a new saxophone since he's pretty sure his was destroyed or stolen during the invasion anyway, and plays it on the docks, and laughs at the number of people who think he's playing for money.

For now, he'll stay. When term starts he'll take a few classes, and buy himself some time. He didn't know where he was going before the war, and he doesn't feel a drivin' need to figure it out just yet. Besides, he's got a girl here now, and figures someone's gotta keep an eye on everyone.

But Irvine does not always know what to say to the others. That first night with Selphie he wondered at her radio, and woke up feeling almost guilty at the dark circles under her eyes (even though she said she slept just fine). He lies to her after the second time when she keeps the damn thing turned on and tells her he can't sleep, but he can block it out without trouble.

What he can't block out is their damage. Oh, he's sure that all Selphie really needs from him is a pair of arms around her, but that's the thing: Irvine reacts in dirty jokes and business as usual, and that's not what the rest of them need. Squall's the only one he thinks he might be able to connect with, and it's hard enough getting him alone or out of the office, much less gettin' him to talk, and that's only because Squall's an avoider as well.

But Irvine? He's on the outside. Even if he had the right words to say, he wouldn't; figures it'd just be insulting to try. He hasn't tried to strangle his girlfriend during the night, or condensed his personality into paint chips and wall hangings. Irvine trains, and jokes, and laughs, and the war is just a memory, just a thing he once did. For awhile he agrees to join Zell on his field trips, but weekend stays in the forest just aren't as much fun when you aren't allowed to quit hunting and just stop and have a beer, and anyway, there's the same unease out there as there is in in the dark with Selphie. That need he has to say something to break the tension, to make the other person smile, to crack through the false outer layer of violence or night clubs or however they're spendin' their time, until they can all just remember to breathe.

This, Irvine knows, will not happen. And so he keeps his mouth shut, and goes back to playing the sax on the docks. Time passes, and he moves with it without question, just waitin' for everyone to eventually catch up.

.

After Zell is discharged, Irvine visits him and it's the start of a routine. Irvine brings him food he shouldn't have during recovery, and Zell gets him hooked on a video game he said Rinoa brought him "to keep him a part of the action." All Irvine has to do is look at the cover to know neither Rinoa nor Squall found that game on their own, but refrains from voicing his suspicion that Rinoa got the recommendation from Seifer. (He'll always figure he missed a few things when it comes to those two.)

"I hear Justine's with someone new," Zell says, a bowl of chips in his lap and a six pack of soda on the couch beside him.

"Who'd you hear that from?"

"Your girlfriend. She brought me this." Zell lifts his new wireless controller. "She said you always complain about how it looks like I'm gonna knock my food everywhere with the other kind."

"You spilled my beer last time!"

"It was an acciden-YOU COCKSUCKER!" Zell's half of the screen goes black and he looks like he might throw the controller across the room, but instead slams it onto the couch and flips Irvine off with a finger still puckered from recent burns.

Irvine grins, and reaches over to steal one of Zell's sodas. "And now I'll be claimin' my winnings."

Zell grunts_,_ and leans forward to grab his crutches. "Let's go somewhere."

"You feelin' up for it? I don't know if you're gonna score your old girl lookin' like that." Zell is wearing the same athletic wear with BALAMB GARDEN plastered down the legs of the pants he's worn almost every time Irvine has come to visit, and his hair is flat against his head. He's thrilled to finally feel like he can make a joke without seeing anger or tears or a complete shut down as the reaction.

"Chicks dig scars, right? Worked for Squall."

"Goin' after his girl's just gonna get you back in infirmary."

"I'll chance it." Zell grins, crushes an empty soda can, and tosses it into a bin half full of aluminum where it makes a satisfying clattering sound. He hobbles towards the door, stops, and Irvine wonders if he isn't having second thoughts about venturing out into the world.

"Want another go? 'Cause I ain't gonna let you win."

"You're really just okay, aren't you?"

It's not the response Irvine is expecting, and his laugh stutters out. "What?"

"I just don't get it. From Selphie maybe, or even Rin if she hadn't..." Zell stops; that is a thing they don't talk about. He pauses for a second, and then mutters, "Lucky bastard."

"I guess I am." Irvine opens the door and checks the urge to knock one of Zell's crutches off balance.

It's a thing he's wondered himself, and not infrequently. Why him? What singled him out? Irvine likes to think he's just that well adjusted, but it hasn't stopped him from spending the last month or so waiting for the other shoe to drop. He figures, though, that's a good way to drive himself insane, and if the war didn't manage that he's not gonna do it to himself.

.

In a year's time, they are divided. Irvine visits Squall and Rinoa in Timber when he can, and Selphie meets him in downtown DC every couple of weeks for a night on the town. He thinks Zell and Quistis are doing fine these days back in Balamb, but he doesn't have reason to go there very often, and figures if anything major happened Squall'd tell Rinoa, and she'd pass it along.

He is walking past the Arch when the world crashes in on him. There is a sound-a car backfiring maybe, or it could even be an actual gunshot-and the memory of everything floods him at once, closing in and taking away his air. He is frozen in the middle of the sidewalk and someone bumps into him, and without a second thought he takes a wide swing.

There are screams-screams, like watching Squall tear through these very streets while he tried to restrain Rinoa, screams like the cries of the witches as they waded through time, screams from memories he doesn't know he has. A hand touches his shoulder and he grabs it and bends forward, and hears the thud of a body hitting the sidewalk. The crowd backs away, and he turns a slow circle. They are blurry, faceless. Irvine is choking in difficult breaths, and hears worried shouts, but will not let anyone come close.

Then there are sirens. Then there are people around him he cannot shake off, and then he is being helped onto a stretcher (he thinks), someone speaking calmly beside him, and he feels them slip restraints over his wrists.

He is discharged after a weekend of observation, clutching a bottle of pills and a note with a time and date for a follow-up appointment.

Now he can see the streets, and the people have faces, but the colors are _bright,_ and the normal sounds of the city that blend together are separate, sharp, disjointed. He downs one of the pills in the hospital parking lot, and jumps at the sound of a car door slamming, and runs inside to ask the front desk to call him a cab.

At night, he chases another pill with half a bottle of whiskey and when the city fades away he is alone with his nightmares.

Now, Irvine is afraid of _everything._


End file.
